The 10-hour pork shoulder looks and tastes like pork belly, although this California-sized portion might not pass muster in the South. With everything else on the menu, however, it was plenty of swine, and the rich sauce certainly added some weight to this particular dish. The baked cranberry beans, which provide the bed underneath, were perfectly cooked.
I have friends who live in Marin County who are mighty quick to dismiss the culinary options north of the Golden Gate. It is puzzling, in my mind, that such an affluent community has so few top-notch dining options in the [... read more ...]
Organic Orange Blossom Tomatoes: So Fresh and So Clean
I started a community-supported agriculture (CSA) subscription from Riverdog Farm this week, which I’m splitting with a friend. In this age of factory farming, it’s interesting to place oneself at the mercy of strict seasonality. However, summer is definitely a great time of year to eat seasonally. Tomatoes, corn, peaches, cherries and apples are just a few of the highlights. It’s been uncommonly cool here in the Napa Valley this summer, and I know that the growing season is way off schedule for Napa Cabernet. I suspect that [... read more ...]
I’m not sure if the following recipe appears in Morimoto’s cookbook or not, but last Sunday, when I tasted the delicious pork belly sliders at the pre-opening festivities at Morimoto Napa, I decided that I really needed to learn to more about the Iron Chef’s approach to swine. Fortunately, I have a friend and former chef-school roommate who has cooked at one of Morimoto’s East Coast restaurants, so he’s actually executed this pork belly recipe dozens of times, if not hundreds. As I found out, the recipe itself doesn’t really contain any guarded secrets or esoteric ingredients; instead, [... read more ...]
Peach perfect.
I had dinner at Ad Hoc on Friday night, and although I’ve offered tepid reviews of this restaurant in the past, I did have a great meal there, I must admit. The night’s menu featured an Italian-themed dinner, which actually began with meatballs, which to me was so much more interesting than salad, Ad Hoc’s typical first-course selection. After the meatballs, it was a perfectly-roasted half-chicken, followed by a cheese course, and about as much tiramisu as I could devour. The cheese plate was garnished with honey, chopped pistachios, and one of my favorite things in [... read more ...]
I don’t think that anyone has ever claimed that Nutella was actually healthy, but some proposed European Union (EU) labeling laws have placed Italy’s much-adored, chocolate-hazelnut spread in a sticky situation (I apologize, that’s my best material at the moment). Apparently, it’s not just Americans who have been grazing their way towards obesity for the last several decades, but weight-related health issues are also beginning to plague the citizens across the Atlantic as well. In order to enact change, the EU has recently drafted a measure that would mandate more conspicuous labelling for foods that have especially high percentages [... read more ...]
